The present invention relates to a color image printer for printing a multi-color image in a dot matrix fashion.
The present invention relates, more particularly, to a color ink jet system printer which includes a printer head for emitting yellow ink droplets, magenta ink droplets, cyan ink droplets, and black ink droplets toward a record receiving paper, thereby printing a multi-color image in a dot matrix fashion.
The present invention relates, more specifically, to a print control system in a color ink jet system printer for effectively combining character information, image information, and background color information.
An example of the color ink jet system printer of the ink-on-demand type is described in copending application, "COLOR INK JET SYSTEM PRINTER", Ser. No. 488,827, filed on Apr. 26, 1983 by Yoshio KANAYAMA and assigned to the same assignee as the present application. The German counterpart is No. P 33 15 514.3 filed on Apr. 29, 1983. The color ink jet system printer generally includes a nozzle unit having at least four orifices for emitting yellow ink droplets, magenta ink droplets, cyan ink droplets, and black ink droplets, respectively. The nozzle unit is mounted on a carriage which travels in the lateral direction so that a multi-color printing is carried out in a dot matrix fashion with the ink droplets emitted from the nozzle unit.
In such a color ink jet system printer, color printing is carried out as shown in FIG. 8, wherein character information (character "A", printed by black ink droplets B), image information (image pattern printed on lines L21, L22, L23, L24, L31 and L32 by cyan ink droplets C and magenta ink droplets M), and background color information (background printed on Lines L11, L12, L13, L14, L33 and L34 by yellow ink dropltes Y) are printed out in a composite pattern. In the conventional system, the composite pattern information is formed at a data processing system connected to the color ink jet system printer. Then, the composite pattern information is applied to the color ink jet system printer as an image data. That is, the character data is converted into an image data in the data processing system, and the thus obtained image data representing the character pattern is combined with the image information and the background color information in the data processing system.
Thus, in the conventional system, the data processing system is required to perform a complicated work.